[Edu-sig] learning harness of choice?

[kirby urner]

Per some thread in the Philippines I'm following, a guy teaching new
users using 3.1 in pure IDLE is frustrating finding that frustrating,
too much crashing.

I've heard that before, but haven't encountered much yet, testing on
Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10 these days.

Wing101 and most other IDEs (e.g. iPython) with live shell are not
sporting 3.x yet.

I've got Eclipse + pydev but isn't that overblown for just getting
one's feet wet?

If I do that class at PSU in July, I'll need to give the lab assistant
my preferred configuration.

That's always been 2.x + IDLE + Vpython + POV-Ray, but I'm playing
with doing straight 3.x and keeping it core Python, fewer bells and
whistles?

However, pure terminal seems too austere, and just a text editor with
no shell is wasting the big advantage of REPL.

What, you're running 3.1 inside emacs?  How is that working out for
ya?  Enrollment up or down?

Reassuring were those answers suggesting changing security settings,
as half the time what's messing up IDLE is the firewall caring too
much about the loop back.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know what 3.x classrooms go with,
especially if not with IDLE, ditto 2.x classrooms.  Some have said
Sage.

Kirby

** http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2010/02/small-steps.html